On Behalf Of Irwin Scollar
Announcing Basp+AF8-Past, a new programme for data interchange in archaeological statistics:
Basp+AF8-Past is a free utility programme for use with WinBasp, PAST or data from a spreadsheet. It can read and write three formats, and it's spreadsheet interface may be used for raw data entry and editing if desired. It checks for conformity with the input and output requirements of all three types of data and makes automatic changes where necessary. It can also spawn PAST and WinBasp so that it serves as a control center for both programmes. It does no other processing.
WinBasp is a programme for archaeological statistics that is the fifth descendant of a series of programmes dating back to the early 1970's.
It has a number of specialised features which are not normally found in commercial statistical packages, and it has a unique user interface. For historical reasons, it uses a streamed binary file format which can not be read by other programmes. It has very limited file import and export capability based on the state of the art at the time it was programmed for Windows 3.1 between 1992 and
1994. The database export/import functions are quite obsolete in
WinBasp, so that data interchange with other more modern programmes is often difficult or impossible.
PAST is a recent free programme for paleontological statistics which contains many features that are not available in WinBasp, but WinBasp has a few features which are not in PAST. PAST uses an editable ascii text file format and a gridded spread-sheet like interface with column data delimited with tab characters and a new line for each row of data.. Many PAST functions may be used with archaeological data.
Excel +ACY- Calc: Spreadsheets like Microsoft's Excel and Open Office/Sun Calc have proprietary data formats. However both can import and export ascii row-column tables delimited with commas (Comma Separated Variables, CSV), and Excel can also use the tab delimited files from PAST. PAST can read native Excel files directly. WinBasp can only export CSV files.
The latest versions of Basp+AF8-Past and WinBasp can be downloaded from:
http://www.uni-koeln.de/+AH4-al001/basp.html +AHs-Univ. of Cologne, Germany+AH0-
http://super5.arcl.ed.ac.uk/baspmirror/basp.html +AHs-Univ. of Edinburgh, Scotland+AH0-
http://www.baspsoftware.org/basp.html +AHs-Dedicated server, Vancouver WA, USA+AH0-
http://wings.buffalo.edu/anthropology/BASP +AHs-Univ. at Buffalo, USA+AH0-
PAST can be downloaded from:
http://folk.uio.no/ohammer/past/
WinBasp and Basp+AF8-Past have been installed and tested under WinXP and WinVista.
All programmes are free of charge.
Irwin Scollar